D3 Barbarian Fresh Level 70 Guide Season 20 | 2.6.8

You now got your Barb to level 70? It is time to get Haedrig’s gift for this season! In our Fresh 70 Barb Guide, you’ll learn exactly what to do for each step, ultimately leading to the end-game as your Fresh 70 Barbarian.

S19’s theme is pretty good, to say the least. It’s a straight up increase in efficiency for just doing what you’re doing… killing things.

It’s a two-part buff/effect. First off, killing enemies grants a stacking buff that caps out at 1000(?) which gives 100% damage and 50% damage reduction. Not bad.

Kill Streaks are also rewarded heavily by granting special effects. I won’t go into detail here (but you can check it out at our S19 start guide), but these effects range from “Frost Nova” after certain kills, “Treasure Chests fall from the sky”. Mostly these effects increase DPS.

Fresh 70 Barbarian: Getting the Free Set!

Before you begin: Considering aiming for a Reapers Wraps sometime early on. The recipe is a 100% drop from any Torment Malthael and is a godly early game item for a resource hungry character.

Click below to reveal the instructions you need for each step:

IMPORTANT: Setting up!

Fresh 70 Barbarian Items needed (Rerolling yellows are value!)

Getting decent item is a must. STR+VIT on everything is a good place to start. Sockets in chest, pants and everything that can get one are recommended!

2H Mighty Weapon: I recommend mighty weapons since you can roll Life per Fury Spent on them. Having STR and VIT is great, too.

Mighty Belt: STR LPFS VIT ALLRES is what you’re aiming for.

Life per Fury Spent (LpFS) is SUPER GOOD at any point in the game. MIGHTY WEAPONS AND MIGHTY BELTS are where you can find it!

BARBARIANS ARE STRENGTH (ARMOR) CLASSES! GET ALLRES!

Barbs get 1 point of Armor for every 1 point of Strength. Since STR appears on most of your gear, Armor becomes diluted with vast amounts of it found on every piece of gear. Instead, you want to maximize your defensive stack by rerolling excess Armor for ALLRES, or basically putting as much ALLRES in your gear as you can.

Elemental% on bracer and amulet is up to 40% increase in damage for 2 rolls. However, there are quite a few elemental options… Lightning is never a bad choice early on, to facilitate the Wind Shear rune.

Sockets on Rings & Amulet: Seriously, try to find/fix this up as soon as possible. You’re gonna need ’em when legendary gems come along. But, right now, I guess jewelry slots are great to shore up the weaknesses of your build since they can roll almost anything. Defenses, Life per Hit… if there’s a time to wear jank rings it’s the early game!

Diamonds on your random sockets give +ALLRES, which as we established early on, are amazing for your defensive stack.

We don’t really need to be so vigilant with Wastes as it’s one of the more powerful sets early on… But try not to use GARBAGE, man.

TLDR: Remove trash-tier stats like…

Life Regen – absolute trash.

Attack Speed – Usually an end-game refinement stat.

Excessive Armor – Useless compared to Allres.

Excessive CDR – Meh… it’s good but not really for right now.

For good early to midgame stats like:

STR+VIT on most gear is okay.

ALLRES in place of Armor for massive defensive gains.

Crit related stats for DPS.

Life per Hit can be okay early on.

You shouldn’t have too much of a problem racing past the journey with Wastes…

Customize Skill Bindings

If you’re not allowed to put two skills on your bar because they’re from the same category – FEAR NOT! This isn’t a bug or a permanent in-game restriction. You simply have to CHECK ON ELECTIVE MODE, via Esc > Options > Gameplay > Elective Mode!

Binding Force Move to Mousewheel up & down is a value change that every player should make IMO. It prevents misclicks and skill misfires, and forces you to move to where otherwise an enemy might be.

Season Journey Chapters Table

Here’s an overview of what you should accomplish per chapter for this season. Or press Shift+J in game to check.

Ah… good ‘ol Rend WW Frenzy. This “catch all” Barb build will suit your needs and more. It’s pretty much a speedfarming build! I put a lot of brainless self-healing in the build, but feel free to adjust it to your liking.

Chapters 1 & 2 – entries here are a “Whirlwind”. You should be able to complete these in no time. What I do is do a bounty when I’m 60+ so I can complete all the required boss kills in one go. If you have a bounty in Ruins of Sescheron, head on over to the next floor (Elder Sanctum) to unlock the Kanai’s Cube, too. Now that’s value!

Stick to Hard Difficulty – you don’t have to be a martyr and waste time completing the season journey in higher difficulties. Just increase the difficulty when needed. Stick to the minimum.

The most important part at this stage is keeping an eye out for those usable rare items we’ve discussed in the “Setting up” TAB ABOVE. Don’t blindly scrap everything you loot.

Wrath 2pc is pretty godlike. The only downside is “waiting for loot”, haha. From here on, you *CAN* get greedy with mobility options in your build (Sprint, Pound of Flesh). This is a legit UPGRADE to our Fresh 70 Barb build.

There are a couple of entries that needs to be completed on Master difficulty, however, the rest can be done in Hard mode just to make things easier.

(OPEN: Can be anything that doesn’t interrupt WW much… Sprint purely for speed)

Wrath 4pc is OBSCENELY powerful and there is NO EXCUSE to struggle at any point. We change the build a bit to facilitate LONGER WHIRLWINDING, which triggers the “Rend triple damage” clause given by the 4pc Wastes. Time spent not WW‘ing is damage lost.

Beating GR20 is the main event here, but luckily, we have some other things to do before that!

Upgrade a Rare to Legendary w/ Kanai’s Cube: I’ll go out on a limb and suggest 2H Mace for The Furnace. Wastes doesn’t really need many weapons…

Complete a Torment I Rift: You can do far more than a TI rift, just so you know, but you don’t really need to. Use this rift as a “test” to see how high you can go. TIII+ is even possible.

Set Difficulty to Torment IV: Race towards the bosses! You don’t have to kill the enemies along the way.

Kill Skeleton King – Act I, The Royal Crypts

Kill Odeg the Keywarden – Act I, Fields of Misery

Kill Sokahr the Keywarden – Act II, Dahlgur Oasis

Kill Xah’Rith the Keywarden – Act III, Stonefort

Kill Nekarat the Keywarden – Act IV, Garden of Hope 2nd Tier

Keywardens maps have a key icon next to the waypoint. Purple arrows point you to their location after a short while once you’re in their respective map.

Are you ready for GR20 nephalem?Check the obelisk once you’ve completed the other requirements and see the highest GR you can do. If you aren’t quite at 20, do a higher difficulty neph, or 1 or 2 GR’s to reach 20. Up to you.

Check the next clicky for obliterating GR20 using the 4 piece Wrath of the Wastes set.

Life per Fury Spent appears on MIGHTY BELTS and MIGHTY WEAPONS. Much more notable on Belts, since you don’t sacrifice much to obtain such an amazing recovery stat. LpFS on weapons is usually not taken, since the sacrifice to damage is a little steep – however, THIS EARLY ON, it’s not bad.

BARBARIANS ARE STRENGTH (ARMOR) CLASSES! GET ALLRES!

Barbs get 1 point of Armor for every 1 point of Strength. Since STR appears on most of your gear, Armor becomes diluted with vast amounts of it found on every piece of gear. Instead you want to maximize your defensive stack by rerolling excess armor for ALLRES, or basically putting as much ALLRES in your gear as you can.

That being said, it’s why we recommend slotting as many Diamonds as you can on your body slots to give +ALLRES.

Element%? If I were to recommend ONE element between Physical and Lightning% it would be the latter. I feel that Lightning has a better early game and a comfier late game that has options. Ultimately, don’t ruin a godlike ancient or primal bracer/amulet with this advice – but owning a Lightning bracer/amulet would feel like a great “security” for me.

Skill%? Whirlwind% is only good in the early game. Rend% is straight up better post Ambo’s Pride. I wouldn’t really waste rolls on WW%.

TLDR: Remove trash-tier stats like…

Life Regen – absolute trash.

Attack Speed – Usually an end-game refinement stat.

Excessive Armor – Useless compared to Allres.

Excessive CDR – Meh… it’s good but not really for right now.

Excessive RCR – is crutchy and pretty useless in non-crimson builds.

For good early to midgame stats like:

STR+VIT on most gear is okay.

ALLRESin place of armor for massive defensive gains.

Crit related stats for DPS.

Life per Hitcan be okay early on.

Getting the “correct” stats is more important than getting the perfect stats early on.

Please use a Mighty Weapon

Why Mighty Weapons? Because of WEAPONS MASTER, we gain 2 Fury on hit. This allows us to keep Whirlwinding! Wastes 4: we MUST WW to gain the triple Rend damage buff.

Gaining Power!

Now we have to gain as much power, as quickly as possible.

Legendary Gems

This is the easiest way to gain power simply because acquiring them has little to no RNG. Getting 3 of your best gems will increase your power dramatically in a short time span.

Click on the tabs to see Wrath of the Wastes “Big 3” gems, and “others”.

Wastes 6 Fresh 70 Big 3 GemsOther L. gems?

Taeguk: Defense and offense rolled into one gem! Taeguk is disgustingly strong when it’s viable – and no other does it like Wastes. This is your best gem by far and should be your highest level one.

Bane of the Powerful: You don’t have to invest much in this gem, as it doesn’t scale in power. Leaving it at 25 is fine while you focus on other gems. Great anti-elite tool.

Gogok of Swiftness: I’m not kidding. I’m not even kidding, man. This gem obliterates Pain Enhancer in almost every stage of the game now. PE is pretty bad on Wastes these days.

Any other gems worth it?

Bane of the Stricken is mandatory for higher difficulty GR’s. Wastes WAS laughably bad at killing elites and Rift Guardians (idk about now…). This gem is equal to, if not a little more important than Taeguk in the LATE GAME.

Esoteric Alteration is your go-to endgame defensive gem if ever you need one. Wastes 6 is capable of reaching astronomic toughness, though so I don’t know if you’ll need this.

Just get them asap while slowly climbing the GR levels. Neph. GR. Repeat. Until you have the BIG 3 GEMS. Don’t overdo the level, just go for efficient farming and cheap empowering. GR 34 is enough to 25 a gem.

With 3 of your best gems at L25 – try much higher Torment levels. So now the real farming begins… and likely the defense problems begin, too.

Playing the Build & Adjustments

Now that we have our free 6 piece Wrath of the Wastes set and legendary gems, here are some tips and notes on How to Play the Build.

Also, as you progress and get items, your build may have a weak point here and there that you can patch up given the simple skill, rune, and passive changes listed below.

Superstition is special. It was an old-school way to generate fury amidst elite affixes we could out-heal. Sounds risky, doesn’t it? It’s actually not too bad. It serves as both defense and resource gain so it’s worth mentioning.

Nerves of Steel helps with one the few weaknesses of the build – getting killed in one hit. You can also useTough as Nails – it’s crappy younger brother for the early game.

Pound of Flesh is notable in the sense that it gives you decent regen, but has a mega movespeed bonus, so it covers 2 bases. But, I guess I wouldn’t take it for defensive reasons – more for the movespeed…

More mobility needed?

Battle Rage-Ferocity (already recommended) is the best base rune for Battle Rage given the goals of Wastes. I would only consider changing this rune out in the toughest of GR’s.

Pound of Flesh does work. Mobility and healing, great for speeds. It adds a layer of regen that’s strong enough to make farming higher difficulties “brainless”.

Sprint is a simple but effective movement tool. It does fall into the “Greedy” category but if you’re going to sacrifice a skill for something, I might as well tell you which one to look for. It’s the default recommendation for the open skill.

Wastes is fast, people! There are so many ways to improve speed but that’s best discussed in a context of actual speed farming.

Upgrading 1H-Mighty Weapon is MEGA VALUE. The three possible jackpots here are, of course, Ambo’s Pride (which singlehandedly shoots us forward higher than any other single item), and theBul-kathos’ Oath Set(Solemn Vow, Warrior Blood). A basic setup would be to use the set and cube the Pride.

There’s almost nothing else you’d want with Wastes using DB’s EARLY ON. You might want to dump death’s breaths from now on to bait for ancients, or upgrade body pieces / rings to find what you need.

The Classics: Good for any type of newer character, and even the most battle-hardened of builds.

Bridging to the End-game

So you skipped a whole chunk of the powering up phase with the free set. Now what? Like I always say, “Speedfarming first before pushing GR’s”. So, convert what you have NOW to be as speedfarmy as possible, first.

7 COMMENTS

the season 13 barbarian build is overpowered.I suggest pairing MOTE with a good rolled Fury of the Vanquished Peak + seismic slam % on items you can get it.Fun times and makes Seismic slam fun to play with plus all the earthquakes.